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Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

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Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#261

Post by dang »

petulanta wrote: post #235
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is sad to think that the myth of our moral superiority has never been anything else. No, it's real, just not as real as we like to think. Between "imprison people of Japanese ancestry for the rest of the war, then free them" and "imprison people of Jewish ancestry, then kill them", there is a real moral difference. They are both wrong, but they are not equal.

So just because we didn't cause the Holocaust, we are morally superior? That's a pretty low bar and a ridiculous argument, but it says a lot about the American mindset.

I'm uncomfortable with some of the arguments being made here, too, but your first sentence is a rather uncharitable spin and your second one reads like a slur (though I'm sure you didn't mean it that way). Please don't comment like this here.

Instead, please post civilly and substantively, and make your comments more civil and substantive on divisive topics, not less. That's the only way we can stave off a downward spiral in this place.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#262

Post by sushid »

kmeade wrote: post #255

FDR's Japanese Concentration Camps? FDR's? That's a blatant attempt to simplify a historical event and manipulate the modern reader. Please spare me another rehash of how mean we became during the GOD-DAMN SECOND WORLD WAR, when our country and culture were under REAL threat. Please spend that energy examining our modern forms of prejudice and crazy fearfulness. Also -- Why does no one ever want to rehash the post-wa…

Yes, FDR's Japanese Internment (aka Concentration) camps. Yes, really, FDR's.

If you give FDR credit for things like the New Deal (which were of course advocated by him but passed by the Congress), give him a bit of credit for his executive orders.

> [The internment of Japanese Americans] were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.[0]

> Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. This order authorized the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas as military zones, clearing the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans and Italian-Americans to internment camps. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#263

Post by rubberstamp »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #82
0xfeba wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. It's a facade. Especially during the Carter, Nixon, HW Bush, etc. eras, culminating in Bush Jr's "They hate us for our Freedoms" speech after 9/11. No, they hate us for our overly zealous anti-communism that drove us to forcefully prop up dictatorships/extremist groups (Panama, Cuba, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda, etc.), and then vacate when things went sour. Time and time, and time again we did this in the past…

Communists of various stripes murdered somewhere around 100 million people in the last century. What, exactly, counts as "overly zealous" in that context?

And how many have capitalists of various stripes killed in last century?

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#264

Post by burkaman »

lodi wrote: post #260
burkaman wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a very good comparison. 60,000 people being executed over 6 years is very different from rounding up 3 million people, alive, in some camps. China also has no free press and a heavily censored internet. Building huge camps and housing millions of people is simply impossible to do in secret.

There's three different categories here: 1) People that didn't know there were internment/concentration camps at all. 2) People that knew there were camps, but didn't know about the murder/torture/etc. They earnestly believed these camps were for detaining prisoners, like the American camps. 3) People that knew everything. Given that Americans knew about their own camps--and did nothing--I'm inclined to believe that…

Ok, sure, that's possible. I misunderstood what you meant by "unaware of the camps". Still, a lot of historians disagree with you. The most blunt quote in the Wikipedia article I linked is "General information concerning the mass murder of Jews was widespread in the German population."

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#265

Post by kmeade »

sushid wrote: post #262
kmeade wrote: post #255

FDR's Japanese Concentration Camps? FDR's? That's a blatant attempt to simplify a historical event and manipulate the modern reader. Please spare me another rehash of how mean we became during the GOD-DAMN SECOND WORLD WAR, when our country and culture were under REAL threat. Please spend that energy examining our modern forms of prejudice and crazy fearfulness. Also -- Why does no one ever want to rehash the post-wa…

Yes, FDR's Japanese Internment (aka Concentration) camps. Yes, really, FDR's. If you give FDR credit for things like the New Deal (which were of course advocated by him but passed by the Congress), give him a bit of credit for his executive orders. > [The internment of Japanese Americans] were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.[0] > Executive Order 9066 w…

Saying "FDR's ... Camps" is like saying "Harry Truman's Victory over Hitler" or "Ronald Reagan's Space Shuttle." Again, it is an extreme simplification and an attempt to manipulate the reader into associating the act with the individual.

I'm amazed that many (presumably young) people want to wallow in this crap, apparently feeling superior to people who have been dead for decades. You have no reason to feel superior to the generation (and the individuals) who sacrificed so much to confront and defeat Fascism. Quite the opposite. Look around yourself.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#266

Post by dang »

striking wrote: post #184
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was ended.

Clearly 'dang needs to remind people of this.

We're looking through all the comments that mention this and replying to all of them when other users haven't already.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#267

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mikeash wrote: post #239
bpodgursky wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, you must also have had a pretty spotty education, because you missed the part where the fuel embargo was to stop the ongoing genocide the Japanese were conducting against China. Don't act like the world would have been A- ok if we had just been ok selling gas to power genocides.

It's worth noting that China lost 15-20 million people in the war, which is the second highest death toll of all the involved countries, behind the USSR. And the war in China gets very little attention. If you ask people when WWII started, they'll usually say December 7th 1941 (if they're being US-centric) or September 1 1939 (if they remember Poland). Yet the Japanese had been rampaging around China since the early…

Well... the US did stop selling some stuff (steel, rubber, gasoline, and maybe a bit more) to Japan because of what they were doing in China. That was a factor in Japan deciding to go to war with the US.

So I don't know if you count that as "little done to stop them". That was what we could do, short of war, and even that helped precipitate war.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#268

Post by petulanta »

dang wrote: post #261
petulanta wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just because we didn't cause the Holocaust, we are morally superior? That's a pretty low bar and a ridiculous argument, but it says a lot about the American mindset.

I'm uncomfortable with some of the arguments being made here, too, but your first sentence is a rather uncharitable spin and your second one reads like a slur (though I'm sure you didn't mean it that way). Please don't comment like this here. Instead, please post civilly and substantively, and make your comments more civil and substantive on divisive topics, not less. That's the only way we can stave off a downward s…

Please name one other way you can logically interpret that statement because I certainly see no other meaning whatsoever.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#269

Post by grzm »

FrancoDiaz wrote: post #213

The politics ban is lifted, and as usual, a complete degradation into the usual rhetoric. People write a comment and think somebody's mind will be changed. Nope, not gonna happen. Just look at comments and replies. It's just delusional thinking to think that HN is somehow above the fray when it comes to this stuff.

I share your frustration with the inflammatory discussion we can sometimes see here at HN. If this is something you care about, there are things you can do. Participate in discussions constructively and charitably. You're right about writing a comment and expecting someone's mind is going to be changed. I try to keep in mind that it's not necessarily about "changing people's minds", it's at least partly about understanding and making yourself understood first. Encourage good comments by up-voting them. Gently and neutrally point out behavior that's not acceptable on HN. Flag and down vote inappropriate behavior. For particularly egregious behavior, email the mods. That's part of being part of the community.

Re: Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps

#270

Post by AnimalMuppet »

laumars wrote: post #211
knz wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote you but personally I feel conflict can be justified - stopping the Holocaust and defeating the nation that committed genocide and atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking were enough justification without considering the invasion of a huge number of sovereign territories. It disgusts me that the world has sat by during recent genocides.

Thanks for the insight. I don't disagree your point per se. If war could be accomplished without further harming those citizens then I might agree. Or if war brought about positive change then maybe you could justify the means. But sadly we've seen time and time again that destabilising governments through instigating war - even horrible despotic regiems like the aforementioned - usually ends up with more long term c…

In the cases of Germany and Japan, we won very thoroughly, and then re-did their government and society very thoroughly. In the case of Iraq, we won very thoroughly, and then decided that we should not re-do their government and society. There may not have been the political will to do anything else, but that turned out to be less than effective at transforming Iraq.
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